The Bertelsmann Foundation’s “Briefing Book” for the incoming American president identifies seven “key” international issues. Perhaps more notable than those issues that made the cut is one that did not: terrorism. Whereas for the Bertelsmann authors “climate change” is an urgent global “threat” requiring immediate action, Islamic terror barely appears on the radar. Indeed, as [...]

The Bertelsmann Foundation has helpfully prepared an 80-page “briefing book” on transatlantic relations for the incoming American president — or what the foundation’s German site also calls a “Europe-Handbook for Barack Obama”. Bertelsmann can be sure that Obama will give close attention to its recommendations — since, as so happens, the Bertelsmann Corporation is the [...]

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the recent release of the Clinton tax data was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance for what would become his autobiography, My Life. Who would pay such an enormous sum to Bill Clinton — thus, in effect, [...]

On Tuesday, Germany’s Commission of Inquiry on Concentration in the Media (KEK), an authority created in 1997 and charged with safeguarding “diversity” in the German media, prohibited the Axel Springer editorial group from purchasing the private television network ProSiebenSat1. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (11 January 2006) explains:

Last week, Medienkritik noted the irony of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University giving a prize to Bertelsmann CEO Gunter Thielen. The AICGS is, according to its own mission statement, dedicated to “strengthening the German-American relationship in an evolving Europe and changing world”, whereas Bertelsmann publications in Germany, as [...]

[Originally posted at www.trans-int.blogspot.com] Over on the English version of Kosmoblog, Ulrich Speck has posted a response to my remarks in “The Meaning of ‘Nein’” on his assessment of the current condition of the EU “Constitution”: i.e. dead or (if just barely) alive? Read it here. I agree with Ulrich that the likeliest strategy of [...]